An item in transit (e.g., a letter, a package, a pallet, a perishable item, a non-perishable item, a medical product) may travel through a system outside a control of a sender (e.g., a seller) and a recipient (e.g., a customer) of the item in transit. For example, the sender may use a mailing center (e.g., a third party logistics provider) to prepare a number of items to be sent to a group of recipients. A carrier (e.g., the United States Postal Service®, United Parcel Service®, FedEx®) may route the item in transit through a series of logistical nodes (e.g., intermediate locations between a location of the sender and a location of the recipient).
The recipient may get upset when things they order arrive late or damaged. The sender may be blamed for mistakes made by the mailing center and/or the carrier. The recipient may not contact the sender to explain what happened. Further, a confirmation notice associated with the item in transit may seem impersonal. Therefore, the recipient may discard the confirmation notice.
The recipient may not be able to track a present location of the item in transit. Even when the mailing center provides a tracking code associated with the item in transit, the tracking code may not be easily discoverable by the recipient (e.g., may be buried in emails). In some situations, the recipient may forget that the item in transit is to be received. As a result, the recipient may not be available to receive the item in transit when it arrives. This may cause the item in transit to be lost, damaged (e.g., by encountering bad weather), and/or stolen. Therefore, the sender may lose a valuable opportunity to build a relationship with the recipient as the item in transit moves from the sender to the recipient through the carrier. Therefore, the recipient may lose trust in the sender. As a result, valuable current and future revenue opportunities between the sender and the recipient may be lost.